Walther von Reichenau

Walther von Reichenau (8 October 1884-17 January 1942) was a Field Marshal of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. He was infamous for issuing the "Severity Order", ordering German troops to kill Soviet Jewish civilians as the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941.

Biography
Walther von Reichenau was born on 8 October 1884 in Karlsruhe, German Empire, and he was twice awarded the Iron Cross during World War I. After the war, the right-wing Von Reichenau joined the Freikorps paramilitary group and served as one of the 4,000 officers of the Reichswehr. In April 1932, Von Reichenau's uncle introduced him to Adolf Hitler, and Von Reichenau joined the Nazi Party. He became a liaison between the Wehrmacht army and the Nazi Party, and he persuaded the Nazi leadership to clamp down on the Nazis' paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung (SA), in order to allow for the party to win the army's support, leading to the 1934 Night of the Long Knives.

In September 1939, Von Reichenau was given command of the German Tenth Army to invade Poland at the start of World War II, and he led the German Sixth Army during the invasion of Belgium and the ensuing offensive against France. In 1940, Hitler made him a Field Marshal of Nazi Germany, and he led the Sixth Army into the heart of Russia during Operation Barbarossa. Von Reichenau supported the Einsatzgruppen in exterminating Jews and Slavs as the German invasion forces advanced into the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, believing that all Jews were Bolsheviks. He was partly responsible for the Babi Yar massacre, which killed over 30,000 Jews. In January 1942, he suffered a stroke and died in Poltava, Ukrainian SSR before he could be evacuated for medical care.